Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (108 page)

It is interesting to see Mary and Martha mentioned in the context of a discussion of women’s role at the eucharist. As Francois Bovon has pointed out, both women appear at the eucharist in the Acts of Philip 8.2, where Mary prepares the bread and salt for the meal and Martha ministers to the crowds.
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Stewart-Sykes concludes that the passage “seems directly to speak to the situation envisaged by K [=Apostolic Church Orders], to the extent that we may suggest that K is a direct response to the liturgical role of women presupposed by Acts of Philip.”
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He goes on to suggest that the author knew of Montanist groups, with women officers, and such Gnostic groups as produced the writings connected with Mary Magdalene, and he ponders whether the final redactor “is alarmed by the situation that obtains and, rather than recognizing that this is ancient tradition, believes this to be a Gnostic innovation, so using Gnostic tools (the dialogue) and anti-Gnostic tools (apostolicity) to oppose it.”
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Faivre agrees, concluding that in view of the role mapped out for women in the treatise, the pseudepigraphic authorship plays a decisive role in the theological claims of the text. The attribution of the church order to the apostles establishes the antiquity of the contents of the books, provides literary unity for the material, and “above all … gives to more recent materials an authority equal to that of authentic materials.”
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Several forged texts that can be grouped together as “revelatory” also reflect internal Christian debates over church organization and leadership. These documents all appear to have been forged, in part, to oppose aspects of proto-orthodox forms of Christianity. Two of these texts come to us from the Nag Hammadi Library; the other is one we have already considered in the context of anti-Jewish polemic in Chapter Eleven, the Ascension of Isaiah.

As we have seen, the Ascension of Isaiah contains certain motifs otherwise widely associated with Gnostics, in particular, the ascent and descent of the Beloved, who changes into a new shape in each realm of the heavens and delivers the passwords
necessary to be granted passage. On the whole, however, the book appears to be most closely aligned with proto-orthodox theological views, even if Darrell Hannah is right that these views are somewhat “naïve.”
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Included in a vision narrated in the opening section of the book (the Martyrdom of Isaiah) is a polemical passage that appears to be directed against the leaders of the author’s community, who are maligned for downplaying the importance of prophecy for the life of the church, presumably in favor of more worldly oriented hierarchy such as eventually came to dominate the orthodox tradition (3:21–31).

Robert Hall has argued that in this polemic the Ascension reflects competition among various prophetic groups in its community. For him, the text “issues from an early Christian prophetic school in conflict with other similar early Christian groups.”
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In fact, however, there is little in the text to suggest that the controversy was between prophetic groups; on the contrary, the polemic appears to be directed against a (majority) group that spurns the prophetic activities of the author and his smaller community.

The passage in question is preceded by a summary of an Isaianic vision of the Beloved’s descent, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, followed by the coming of the Holy Spirit (3.13–20). We are then told that “afterwards, when he is at hand, his disciples will forsake the teachings of the twelve apostles” (3.21).
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The main problem in the life of the community will be its leaders: “many who will love office though they are devoid of wisdom” (3.23). Indeed, “many elders will be lawless and violent shepherds to their sheep…. They will have no holy shepherds” (3.24). The leaders will be covetous; and there will be “much slandering and boasting” (3.26). More important, “there will not be many prophets nor such as speak reliable words, except a few here and there” (3.27). As a result, “great discord will arise among them” (3.29). And possibly most significant of all, they “will set aside the prophecies of the prophets which were before me and also pay no attention to these my visions” (3.31).

The first-person narrator here, of course, is Isaiah, and it is passages such as these that make the work an embedded forgery, as discussed earlier. The polemic of the passage is directed against church leaders who reject the authority of prophecy, both the visions of this Isaiah and of the other prophets of the church that arose before him.
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It is interesting to observe, in this connection, the movement away from charismatic authority in some proto-orthodox writings that discuss church leadership and organization. The Pastoral epistles, obviously reflect a very different ecclesial situation from, say, the Corinthian correspondence. In Corinth, the church was organized and run by those endowed with spiritual gifts given at baptism, including such revelatory powers as prophecy and speaking in tongues. Not so for the Pastorals, where the right to direct the church comes through the laying on of hands by the elders, given to those who meet certain standards and qualifications. Even the “prophetic utterances” that “pointed to” Timothy are ratified and brought under control of the “council of elders” through some kind of ritual of ordination (1 Tim. 4:14). Direction for this community comes from “scripture … preaching … teaching” (1 Tim. 4:13), not through relatively uncontrolled and uncontrollable prophetic utterance. Presupposed here is a hierarchical structure, which saw the apostle as the one ultimately in charge, then his appointed delegate, and then the ordained bishop and deacons. Such a community has scant space for ecstatic utterance or visions to guide the life of the community, and it is not a stretch to imagine that the hierarchy was put in place precisely to provide controls for the kind of organizational chaos that could erupt under a more charismatic system, as indeed did erupt in the community at Corinth in Paul’s time. The Ascension of Isaiah appears to be reacting to this kind of relatively new “system,” so that we are well served seeing in it a counterforgery, in the strong sense, to the forged apostolic authorizations of church structure such as seen in the Pastoral epistles.

We can see the same movement toward hierarchical structure play itself out, more or less before our eyes, in the Didache. For this community there continue to be charismatic prophets who visit the churches from outside and give it instructions. But they are to be treated gingerly, and at this stage of the community’s history, somewhat skeptically (Didache 11–13). This is a different community from both those of the Pastorals and of the Ascension of Isaiah. But the same mechanics are involved in the development away from charisma and toward hierarchy. It is particularly striking in this connection that although the Didachist entertains healthy doubts about the viability of charismatic directives for the church, it also issues instructions for the community to appoint bishops and deacons (
ch. 15
), who presumably would be permanent and grounded fixtures, as opposed to the wandering charismatics who were clearly being seen already as a problem.

The Ascension of Isaiah then presents a kind of counterattack against this move toward orthodox hierarchy. The settled, antiprophetic leadership of the church is peopled by covetous, boastful, and envious leaders who are “devoid of wisdom” and who move the community in the wrong direction. God speaks through the prophets—not merely the prophets of old, such as Isaiah, but through the prophets of the present day, who have visions of God and learn the truths necessary for the proper guidance of the community.

The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter appears as tractate 3 in codex 7 of the Nag Hammadi Library. It can probably be dated to the early third century.
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We will be looking at the work in greater length in the next chapter, since the principle thrust of its polemic involves its negative views of the flesh, over against the proto-orthodox insistence on the fleshly existence of both Christ and his followers. But there are also clear polemical charges leveled against the church hierarchy that this author, and his community, rejected, a hierarchy that has every appearance of being a majority, proto-orthodox church structure.

The author identifies himself as Jesus’ own disciple at the outset of the treatise: “He said to me, Peter …” (7.70.20).
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It is interesting to note the clear parallels between this Petrine forgery and others that are still preserved. The concluding portion of the treatise is its most famous feature, an eyewitness account of the crucifixion of Jesus, with a decidedly Gnostic twist. One cannot help but recall the words of the earlier forger of 1 Peter, who declared that he was “a witness to Christ’s sufferings” (1 Pet. 5:1). The parallels with 2 Peter are particularly numerous, as I will note in a moment.

The author of the account admits that only a few of his readers will acknowledge his revelation and so come to saving knowledge. As the Savior tells him, “From you I have established a base for the remnant whom I have summoned to knowledge” (71.19–20). Those without this knowledge are “blind ones who have no guide” (72.12–13). It is, in other words, the revelatory vision of Peter, not the church leaders, that is to lead the people. And so we learn that those who teach the community, the priests and scribes who praise the Savior, are “blind and deaf” (73.13–14). They think they are praising the Savior but they are instead blaspheming.

And they welcome as their followers those who “praise the men of the propagation of falsehood, those who will come after you” (74.10–12). These would be Peter’s supposed successors, who were presumably the leaders of the churches in his wake. But the members of the community “will become greatly defiled and they will fall into a name of error and into the hand of an evil cunning man and a manifold dogma, and they will be ruled heretically” (74.16–23). Moreover, “some of them will blaspheme the truth and proclaim evil teaching” (74.22–25).

These church leaders proclaim what they think is truth, but they misunderstand what it is they preach; at the same time, they arrogantly think they have a corner on the truth: “some who do not understand mystery speak of things which
they do not understand, but they will boast that the mystery of the truth is theirs alone” (76.27–34). What is more, “many others who oppose the truth and are the messengers of error, will set up their error and their law against these pure thoughts of mine.… They do business in my word” (77.22–78.1). The author then moves to specifics, making it perfectly clear that he has been referring to the appointed leaders of the (proto-orthodox) churches: “And there shall be others of those who are outside our number who name themselves bishop and also deacons, as if they have received their authority from God. They bend themselves under the judgment of the leaders. Those people are dry canals” (79.22–31).

These appointed officers of the church will be hugely successful. Peter fears that “there are multitudes that will mislead other multitudes of living ones, and destroy them among themselves. And when they speak your name they will be believed” (80.3–7). To this the Savior responds: “for a time determined for them in proportion to their error they will rule over the little ones” (80.8–11). But these leaders “say evil things against each other” (74.26–27) and they “are divided among themselves” (82.33).

There is strong disagreement among scholars whether the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, in its entirety, is directed against only one set of enemies or is, instead, fighting battles on numerous fronts, with three or even as many as seven opposing groups in view.
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What can be said, clearly, is that the main enemy of its polemic in the portions just cited is the proto-orthodox church structure with its bishops and deacons (and, as we will see in Chapter Thirteen, with its doctrine of crucifixion rooted in an understanding of the need for Christ actually to have died in the flesh for salvation). How does one explain this anti-ecclesiastical rhetoric precisely on the pen of Peter, chief of Jesus’ disciples, allegedly first bishop of Rome and hero of the proto-orthodox community?

The foundational study of the polemic of the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, still very much worth reading more than thirty years on, is Klaus Koschorke,
Die Polemik der Gnostiker gegen das kirchliche Christentum
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Koschorke argued that there are seven groups attacked in various portions of the text, but that they all can be subsumed under one major group, which consists of the leaders of the proto-orthodox churches. At stake ultimately is the struggle between the two groups, the Petrine Gnostics on one hand and the leaders of the proto-orthodox churches on the other. This is a battle over winning support from the masses of Christians.

Henriette Havelaar goes a step farther, arguing that the community behind the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter was a splinter group from the proto-orthodox
majority, a group that started out within the community, developed “aberrant” views, was excluded from the community, developed these views further, and then entered into a polemical exchange with the larger group. Although Havelaar does not draw attention to the similarities, the model is highly reminiscent of the views of the Johannine community and its secessionists mapped out by J. Louis Martyn and Raymond Brown.
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The model, in this case, would explain why both communities make use of similar traditions. The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, like proto-orthodox writings, uses a good number of the books that later became part of the New Testament; it focuses on the passion narrative and stresses the relationship between Peter and Jesus. At the same time, there are striking differences, precisely at the places of overlap, for example in the value of church offices and in the reality of the flesh and fleshly suffering of Jesus.